The Hot New Dead Poet

Living in San Francisco, preoccupied with writers and writing and books, I've known the name of legendary underground gay poet Jack Spicer for a long time. But I haven't known his poetry. I guess that's about to change, because 2008 ended with the dead-for-forty-years Spicer getting major attention from all over, and now I'm intrigued.

Kevin Killian -- novelist, poet, playwright, all-around San Francisco literary impresario -- has, with poet Peter Gizzi, edited a comprehensive collection of Jack Spicer's writing that will certainly land him on nightstands and coffee tables all over. The book has the excellent title My Vocabulary Did This To Me, words Spicer uttered on his deathbed. Spicer was out and rebellious back in the chilly 50s, but also tortured by his love life and by what the authors call his "unattractive" appearance.

I'd always assumed somehow that Spicer's poems would be difficult, like some of those other mid-century biggies like Ashbery and Olson, but the excerpts posted in the Times Review and elsewhere indicate a surprisingly direct voice that reminds me of Wieners, or O'Hara at his most accessible. This one is called "A Book of Music":

Coming at an end, the lovers
Are exhausted like two swimmers.  Where
Did it end?  There is no telling.  No love is
Like an ocean with the dizzy procession of the waves' boundaries
From which two can emerge exhausted, nor long goodbye
Like death.
Coming at an end.  Rather, I would say, like a length
Of coiled rope
Which does not disguise in the final twists of its lengths
Its endings.
But, you will say, we loved
And some parts of us loved
And the rest of us will remain
Two persons.  Yes,
Poetry ends like a rope.

The rebirth of a poet's reputation long after his death is always a bittersweet thing. He struggled for readers and respect during his life, then slipped away into obscurity. Years later the work is alive for a new generation, which doesn't help the once-destitute poet. Reminds me of something a writing teacher told me a long, long time ago: "You're writing for people who aren't even born yet."

Comments

[Gary]

Now that's a great title "The Hot New Dead Poet"